Various

“ You find milk, and I'll find flour,
And we'll have a pudding in half-an-hour.
[Pg 62]
A man of words and not of deeds
MAN of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of weeds;
And when the weeds begin to grow,
It's like a garden full of snow;
And when the snow begins to fall,
It's like a bird upon the wall;
And when the bird away does fly,
It's like an eagle in the sky ”

“ But I shall still contend that the main, the pervading, the characteristic attraction of them lies in their musical accompaniment of purely senseless sound, in their rhythm, rhyme, jingle, refrain, and the like, in the simplicity and freshness of their modulated form. For thus they serve as anthems and doxologies to the goddess whom in this context it is not satirical to call "Divine Nonsensia," who still in all lands and times condescends now and then to unbind the burden of meaning from the backs and brains of men, and lets them rejoice once more in pure, natural, senseless sound. ”

“ If the "little language" of mothers to babies be set down to a supposition that the object addressed does not understand, that will hardly explain the other "little language" of lovers to lovers, which has a tendency to be nearly as inarticulate as a cradle-song, and quite as corruptive of dictionary speech as a nursery rhyme. In the very stammering of rage there may be thought to be something more than a simple inability to choose between words ”

“ I tell you, Jacky Jingle,
I do not care a fig.
[Pg 305] "I have got a puppy-dog,
And a pussy-cat,
And I have got another thing
That's better far than that.
"For I have got a velvet purse
That holds a hundred pound,
'Twas left me by my grand-dad
Who now lies underground.
"So if your cow and pig
Is all you have in store,
You may go home and mind 'em,
For now your wooing's o'er."
Says Jacky, "You're too hasty,
I've got a horse and cart;
And I have got a better thing,—
I've got a constant heart. ”

“ We shall find in these pieces the two special pillars of all modern poetry, alliteration and rhyme, or at least assonance, which is only rhyme undeveloped. And we shall find something else, which I venture to call [Pg ix] the attraction of the inarticulate. It is not necessary to take the cynical sense of the famous saying, that language was given to man to conceal his thoughts, in order to admit that in moments of more intense and genuine feeling, if not of thought, he does not as a rule use or at least confine himself to articulate speech. ”

“ Birds, beasts, and fishes
HE Dog will come when he is called
The Cat will walk away;
The Monkey's cheek is very bald;
The Goat is fond of play.
The Parrot is a prate-apace,
Yet knows not what he says:
The noble Horse will win the race,
Or draw you in a chaise.
[Pg 225] The Pig is not a feeder nice,
The Squirrel loves a nut,
The Wolf would eat you in a trice,
The Buzzard's eyes are shut.
The Lark sings high up in the air,
The Linnet in the tree;
The Swan he has a bosom fair,
And who so proud as he?
Oh, yes, the Peacock is more proud,
Because his tail has eyes ”

“ It may be permitted to cry "Mercy on us," when one thinks of the poor little wildings, so full of nature and, if not ignorant of art, of an art so cunningly concealed, being subjected to the trimmings and torturings of the Ars Topiaria after this fashion. The division is clearly arbitrary and non-natural; it is often what logicians very properly object to as a "cross"-division; it leads to the inclusion of many things which are not properly nursery rhymes at all ”

“ Since the Brothers Grimm founded modern folklore, it has required considerable courage to approach nursery songs and nursery tales in any but a spirit of the severest "scientism," which I presume to be the proper form for the method of those who call themselves "scientists." ”

“ And while he ran, as I am told,
He ne'er stood still for young or old.
He often squeak'd and sometimes vi'lent,
And when he squeak'd he ne'er was silent;
Though ne'er instructed by a cat,
He knew a mouse was not a rat. ”

“ It is a good many years since Peacock, in one of those curiously ill-tempered and not particularly happy attacks on the Lake poets, with which he chose to diversify his earlier novels, conceived, as an ornament of "Mainchance Villa," a grand allegorical picture, depicting the most famous characters of English Nursery Tales, Rhymes, &c.—Margery Daw, Jack and Jill, the other Jack who built the House, the chief figures of "that sublime strain of immortal genius" called Dickory Dock, and the third Jack, Horner, eating a symbolic Christmas pie. ”

“ All children—and children, as somebody (I forget who he was, but he was a wise man) has said, are usually very clever people till they get spoilt—fall naturally, long after they are quite able to express themselves as it is called rationally, into a sort of pleasant gibberish when they are alone and pleased, or even displeased. ”

“ For instance, take King Arthur, this way, that way, which way you please: as a hero of history, as a great central figure of romance, or even (I grieve to say a learned friend of mine is wont to speak of him so) as a "West-Welsh thief." Are we called upon in the very slightest degree to connect any of these Arthurs with the artist of the bag-pudding? ”

“ The older variety of mystical and moral interpretation having gone out of fashion before they had emerged from the contempt of the learned, it has not been much applied to them, though the temptation is great, for, as King Charles observes in "Woodstock," most things in the world remind one of the tales of Mother Goose.
But the most special attentions that nursery rhymes have received have, perhaps, taken the form of the elaborate and ingenious divisions attempted by Halliwell and others. ”

“ They had got it into a pleasant jingle of vowels, a desirable sequence of consonants, and a good swing of cadence, and that was enough. When "Curlylocks" is invited to be "mine" by the promise "thou shalt sew a fine seam," does anybody suppose that this housewifely operation was much more (it may have been a little more) of a bait to the Curlylocks of those days than to the Curlylocks of these? Not at all. "Sew" and "seam" went naturally together, they made a pleasing alliteration, and the latter word rhymed to "cream," of which the Curlylocks of all days has been not unusually fond. ”

“ It may be perfectly true that most of the things indicated in these class-names supplied, in this case and that, basis for the jingle, starting-points, texts, and so [Pg viii] forth. But all genuine nursery rhymes (even in fragments such as "Martin Swart and his men, Sodledum [saddle them] , sodledum," if it is genuine, and others where definite history comes in) have never become nursery rhymes until the historical fact has been practically forgotten by those who used them, and nothing but the metrical and musical attraction remains. ”

“ Perhaps, therefore, while not grudging folklorists their perquisitions in this delightful region, and while acknowledging that there are many interesting things to be found out by them in it, we may be permitted to look at nursery rhymes from a rather different point of view. ”

“ Fly away, Jill!
Come again, Jack!
Come again, Jill!
[Pg 71]
Hark, hark, the dogs do bark
ARK, hark,
The dogs do bark,
Beggars are coming to town:
Some in jags,
Some in rags,
And some in velvet gowns.
See, see! what shall I see?
A horse's head where his tail should be. ”

“ There are, it seems, historical nursery rhymes, literal nursery rhymes; nursery rhymes narrative, proverbial, scholastic, lyrical, riddlesome; [Pg vii] rhymes dealing with charms, with gaffers and gammers, with games, with paradoxes, with lullabies, with jingles, with love and matrimony, with natural (I wish he had called it unnatural) history, with accumulative stories, with localities, with relics. ”

“ And Puss sat on that.
"Puss," says the Dame,
"Can you catch a rat,
Or a mouse in the dark?"
"Purr," says the cat.
How do you do, neighbour?
How do you do, neighbour?
Neighbour, how do you do?
Very well, I thank you.
How does Cousin Sue do?
She is very well,
And sends her love unto you,
And so does Cousin Bell.
Ah! how, pray, does she do?
[Pg 314]
"Oh, what have you got for dinner?"
"Oh, What have you got for dinner, Mrs. Bond?"
"There's beef in the larder, and ducks in the pond.
Dilly, dilly, ducklings, come and be killed,
For you must be stuffed, and my customers filled! ”

“ Some say a little sighed,
"But what shall we have for to eat, eat, eat?
Will the love that you're so rich in
Make a fire in the kitchen?
Or the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?"
Pussy sits beside the fire
Pussy sits beside the fire,
How can she be fair? ”

“ She went a little farther, and she met a cat. So she said [Pg 287] —
"Cat, cat, kill rat!
Rat won't gnaw rope;
Rope won't hang butcher;
Butcher won't kill ox;
Ox won't drink water;
Water won't quench fire;
Fire won't burn stick;
Stick won't beat dog;
Dog won't bite pig;
Pig won't get over the stile;
And I shan't get home to-night."
The cat said, "If you will give me a saucer of milk, I will kill the rat."
So the old woman gave the cat the milk, and when she had lapped up the milk—
The cat began to kill the rat ”

“ Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, apothecary, ploughboy, thief.
[Pg 321]
He loves me
He loves me, He don't! He'll have me, He won't! He would if he could, But he can't, So he don't!
There once were two cats
There once were two cats of Kilkenny,
Each thought there was one cat too many. ”

“ Many of them probably, some of them certainly, had, as has been said, a definite meaning once, and we may attend to the folklorist as he expounds what it was or may have been; but for the most part they have very victoriously got the better of that meaning, have bid it, in their own lingo, "go to Spain," without the slightest meditation or back-thought whether Spain is the proper place for it or not. ”

“ I rather suspect the wicked literary man of having more to do than genuine popular sentiment with the delightful progress and ending of "There was a Little Boy and a Little Girl." But the undoubtedly genuine notes are numerous enough and various enough, from that previously mentioned and admirable thrift of good King Arthur, or rather of Queen Guinevere (from whom, according to naughty romancers, we should have less expected it) , to the sound common-sense of "Three Children;" ”

“ There I will drink, and eat worms and slugs too,
And then I shall have a good dinner like you."
There was an old woman lived under a hill,
And if she's not gone, she lives there still.
[Pg 68]
When a Twister a twisting
HEN a Twister a twisting, will twist him a twist;
For the twisting of his twist, he three times doth intwist;
But if one of the twines of the twist do untwist,
The twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist. ”

“ Ding, dong bell
ING, dong bell,
Pussy's in the well!
Who put her in?—
Little Tommy Green.
Who pulled her out?—
Little Johnny Stout.
What a naughty boy was that
To drown poor pussy-cat,
Who never did any harm,
But killed the mice in his father's barn.
[Pg 298]
Four and twenty tailors
Four and twenty tailors went to kill a snail,
The best man among them durst not touch her tail;
She put out her horns like a little Kyloe cow,
Run, tailors, run, or she'll kill you all e'en now.
What is the news of the day?
What is the news of the day,
Good neighbour, I pray? ”

“ The cat's in the cupboard, and she can't see,"
where the subtle tendency to nonsense takes the weak intention of sense on its back as a fox does a chicken and runs right away with it. Again, it would be rash to say that it is impossible to make out popular customs and popular beliefs from these texts. ”

“ To any man alive.
If I should give my fiddle,
They'll think that I'm gone mad;
For many a joyful day
My fiddle and I have had.
Young Lambs to sell
Young Lambs to sell!
Young Lambs to sell!
If I'd as much money as I can tell, I never would cry—Young Lambs to sell!
[Pg 249]
"Young Lambs To Sell"
[Pg 251]
[Pg 250]
Johnny Pringle had a little pig
Johnny Pringle had a little pig,
It was very little, so not very big:
As it was playing on a dunghill,
In a moment poor piggy was killed.
So Johnny Pringle, he sat down and cried,
Betsy Pringle, she lay down and died. ”

“ Five frippy Frenchmen foolishly fishing for flies;
Six sportsmen shooting snipes;
Seven Severn salmons swallowing shrimps;
Eight Englishmen eagerly examining Europe;
Nine nimble noblemen nibbling nonpareils;
[Pg 38] Ten tinkers tinkling upon ten tin tinder-boxes with ten tenpenny tacks;
Eleven elephants elegantly equipt;
Twelve typographical topographers typically translating types.
I like little pussy
I like little pussy, her coat is so warm,
And if I don't hurt her she'll do me no harm;
So I'll not pull her tail, nor drive her away,
But pussy and I very gently will play. ”

“ Bedford's illustrations are not only very well drawn, but
inspired by just the right feeling. It may be added, that the
Taylors were really the founders of a school. They gave a form and
character to nursery verse which have become classic, and have
been followed more or less by a long line of later
writers.'—Standard.
'Thanks are due to that delicate lover of literature and of
children, Mr. E. V. Lucas, for reprinting this veritable
classic.'
Times of India.
Large Crown 8vo. printed on superfine paper, cloth boards, gilt top, 6s.; calf, 10s. 6d. ”

“ The sick man drinks the Ass's milk,
The Weasel's long and lank.
The Buck gives us a venison dish,
When hunted for the spoil:
The Shark eats up the little fish,
The Whale produces oil.
[Pg 228] The Glow-worm shines the darkest night,
With Lantern in his tail ”